Introduction
This document details the more technical aspects of the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour, including crowd management and throughput, the ride system, and the animatronics. Patents and information about animatronics were obtained on the World Wide Web. Wait times and queue management techniques were determined from years of experience watching and waiting in queues at Walt Disney World.
Attraction Dynamics
The Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour attraction is set up as to maximize guest throughput. Different stages are used to guide guests through the queue, ride, and post-show. The first stage is the queue room, designed to comfortably hold 150-200 Stand By guests, 60-70 FASTPASS holders, and 30-40 Single Riders. The next stage, the briefing room, should hold up to 40 combined FASTPASS and Stand By guests per showing of the briefing film. The final queuing stage, the loading bay, may hold these same 40 guests as well as an additional 15-20 Single Riders.
A ride vehicle is dispatched from the loading bay every 45 seconds or so with 12-13 vehicles driving around the track at any time. Each scene in the ride also lasts roughly 45 seconds. As one vehicle moves out of a scene, the next one moves in. 16 guests fit in a single ride vehicle, allowing for the full 40 guests in the loading bay to be on the ride within 3 minutes. Thus, the briefing film is slightly more than 3 minutes in length as to send a new group of 40 guests to the then-empty loading bay as the film finishes.
With 40 combined FASTPASS and Stand By guests moving into the briefing room every 3.5 minutes or so, average Stand By wait times for the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour are 20 minutes to reach the briefing room and 30 minutes to reach the actual ride vehicle. At peak times, the line may extend out the door of the building creating longer wait times. FASTPASS guests may experience wait times of up to 20 minutes, but no longer. Single Riders skip nearly the entire queue and should not experience wait times of longer than 10 minutes.
Once on the ride, guests should be entertained for roughly 5-6 minutes, with 7 scenes of approximately 45 seconds each, roughly equal to most large-scale, medium-intensity attractions. After the ride, two post-show activities may occupy up to 20 total minutes for each guest, including wait times. The store allows for a few minutes of lingering as well, bringing the total attraction experience time to 40-50 minutes.
The Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour building also allows for non-riders to be entertained. They may opt to join their parties in the queue, escaping into the post-show from the loading bay before actually boarding. They also may simply enter the post-show area through the gift shop and entertain themselves there. Riders exiting Space Mountain, the Astro Orbiter, and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority may also find their way into the Monstropolis Merchants gift shop.
Ride System
The ride system featured in the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour (MIFT) attraction utilizes the Disney Dynamic Ride Vehicle (U.S. Patent 5,623,878). The inner workings of the ride vehicle are the same as the dynamic ride vehicle and behave much in the same way.
While the dynamic ride vehicle was designed to resemble an all-terrain jeep-type vehicle (above), the MIFT ride vehicle features a more sleek exterior design, in the style of the rest of Monstropolis. As per the patent, “the vehicle body may comprise various forms and can take on a configuration that is themed to a selected environment.” (38) Thus altering the exterior should not affect the mechanics.
However, the vehicle described above does not exactly fit the design required for the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour. An extra row of seats has been added to the MIFT ride vehicle as to facilitate a larger throughput of guests (below).
 
Since this new attraction does not have the same level of energy as attractions utilizing the dynamic ride vehicle (Dinosaur, Indiana Jones’ Temple of the Forbidden Eye), the extra row of seats should not pose any kind of safety hazard. Modifications to the Dynamic Ride Vehicle design may be necessary in order to achieve this greater seating capacity (16 instead of 12) and still retain limited, fluid motion.
The exterior body hides the mechanics underneath the vehicle much like in the original dynamic ride vehicle design. This combined with the fact that the vehicle resembles OmniMover vehicles featured in Epcot attractions such as Spaceship Earth provides guests with the illusion that the “tour guide vehicle” is going to provide a slow-moving, smooth ride. The lack of visible wheels enhances this illusion.
Underneath the body, smaller wheels are hidden at the front, middle, and back of the vehicle. While these do not facilitate the same range of movement possible with the dynamic ride vehicle, such a range is not necessary for the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour. The wheels and underlying mechanics provide minimal ability for the car to translate, rotate, and pitch in all directions, achieving motion in “multiple degrees of freedom independent of any motion of the chassis.” (37)
Another important factor in choosing the dynamic ride vehicle as the ride vehicle for MIFT is its flexibility. As written in the patent:
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“An important aspect of the dynamic ride vehicle is its versatility and ability to be reprogrammed to provide a different sequence of motion patterns. Thus, in an amusement park attraction, one or more dynamic ride vehicles can be programmed differently from the other dynamic ride vehicles. In this way, the differently programmed dynamic ride vehicles can be used to provide the passengers with different ride experiences or ride profiles along the same path each time the passenger rides a differently programmed dynamic ride vehicle.” (37)
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In the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour, the ability to program different ride vehicles along the same track is vital. For the first half of the track, all ride experiences remain the same. However, as soon as Sulley takes control of the vehicle, the ride experience changes. Each dynamic ride vehicle may be programmed in a slightly different manner, allowing for different motions as “controlled” by Sulley. Every time a guest rides, the vehicle may spin or rock at different points in the attraction, providing a different experience every time. Furthermore, since MIFT splits into two separate tracks at one point, taking guests to different scenes, the overall experience will rarely be the same twice for any guest.
In the second to last scene of the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour, the dynamic ride vehicle is used as a motion picture ride simulator. The vehicle moves laterally in front of a giant Omnimax screen while the mechanics underneath the vehicle create a motion simulation synchronized with the projection. The motion found here is similar to that of the attractions “Star Tours” and “Body Wars” which utilize a “cabin” having pivotable ingress-egress bridges (U.S. Patent 5,161,104). Unlike this cabin, the MIFT dynamic ride vehicle does not need to be translated vertically away from loading and unloading platforms. It simply travels along a horizontal track in front of the large screen, in the same way that the OmniMover system did in the old Epcot attraction, Horizons. The MIFT ride vehicle will rock in a similar fashion as the “Star Tours” cabin, utilizing multiple degrees of freedom to achieve movement and simulating flying through the movie.
Finally, the dynamic ride vehicle is also equipped with onboard audio, which allows for complete coordination with the surrounding attraction. Since the vehicles may be programmed to be in slightly different locations at slightly different times performing slightly different actions, audio cues must be sent to the vehicle in order to achieve a coherent multi-sensory experience. Unlike previous dynamic ride vehicle attractions, MIFT will not include any onboard audio synthesizing due to the fact that engine rumbling is not necessary with this “tour guide” vehicle. All audio will be stored onboard and simply be played back on cues.
Overall, the altered dynamic ride system combines freedom to move in any direction with seemingly random ride profiles and a motion picture ride simulator proving guests of the Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour with a ride experience unlike anything else.
Audio-Animatronics
The Monsters, Inc. Factory Tour features several characters requiring advanced audio-animatronics. This document describes the types of animatronics needed for each scene in the attraction. Choices for each character were made with considerations to the types of movement necessary for believability and to the overall cost of the ride.
A100 Audio-Animatronic – The most advanced and believable audio-animatronic
Second Generation – Fairly fluid motion, i.e. Wicket Witch in the Great Movie Ride
First Generation – Limited motion, i.e. Dwarves in Snow White’s Scary Adventure
Loading Bay
Smitty – A100 Audio-Animatronic, fluid motion from the knees up
Needleman – A100 Audio-Animatronic, fluid motion from the knees up
Laugh Floor 1
Harold – A100 Audio-Animatronic, full-body fluid motion with lateral movement
Mike Wazowski – A100 Audio-Animatronic, full-body fluid motion with lateral movement
Sulley’s Office
James P. Sullivan –A100 Audio-Animatronic, fluid motion from the waist up (sitting)
Boo’s Room
James P. Sullivan – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, semi-fluid motion from the waist up
Boo – First Generation Audio-Animatronic, limited motion from the waist up
Harold and Boo – First Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and lateral movement
Lobby
Celia – A100 Audio-Animatronic, fluid motion from the waist up (sitting)
Cafeteria
Ted, Fungus, George, “Claws”, Bile, Harley – First Generation Audio-Animatronic, little to no motion necessary
Roz’s Window
Roz – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial movements
CDA – First Generation Audio-Animatronic, limited lateral movement
Hallway 1
Hitchhiking James P. Sullivan – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and arm movements
Hitchhiking Mike Wazowski – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and arm movements
Hallway 2
Pirate James P. Sullivan – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and arm movements
Pirate Mike Wazowski – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and arm movements
Laugh Floor 2
James P. Sullivan – A100 Audio-Animatronic, fluid motion with lateral movement
Mike Wazowski – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and body movements
Boo – Second Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and body movements
Harold – First Generation Audio-Animatronic, facial and limited body movements
Patent Sources
Hiddenmickeys.org: http://www.hiddenmickeys.org/Patent/Patent.html
United States Patent and Trademark Office: http://www.uspto.gov
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